Night after night
by detective-smartypants
Summary: Post 2x05. Callie can't sleep and Stef finds her watching TV in the living room in the middle of the night. Mother/daughter bonding ensues. OneShot


**A/N: One of those 'I'd have really liked to have seen this happen' stories. **

She hasn't thought about him for a while, not much since the court case, even less since the Fosters asked her if they could adopt her. Sometimes he'd linger in the back of her mind, but most of the time she was pretty good at pushing the thought of him away.

But now her head is spinning, his name is heavy on her chest and she can't quite bring herself to fall asleep. When she closes her eyes, he's there, and when she opens them – well, he's still there. Maybe she'll be okay if she distracts herself, maybe she'll forget all about the insistent weight on her lungs.

She hates how he makes her feel like a child, like she can't do it alone, like she needs support.

She hates how he lingers.

At 1am, she calls it quits and heads down the stairs to the living room. Maybe the TV will help. She flicks through the channels with the volume on 2, the light making her eyes burn from exhaustion. She knows she should sleep, she does, but she _really _doesn't want to shut her eyes.

She watches three episodes of comedy and doesn't laugh once and by the time 3am rolls around, she's overtired. She see's him on all of the faces in the television, she hears his voice, she swears she can feel him in the room and it makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand right up.

She decides that she needs coffee, although she wishes that it could be something stronger. She'd tried beer once at a party, she liked how it made her head float. She wonders if it would make his voice disappear.

One cup of coffee makes her brain hurt, and two makes her stomach ache, and three finally wakes her up.

4:53am, her eyes are drooping shut and she's disappointed that the coffee doesn't do what it was supposed to do. She can't sleep, she knows it, because she will _definitely _dream about him and she definitely can't deal with that. She pulls her knees up to her chest and flicks through the channels, but the screen blurs and the voices slur and her head lolls, and then there is a noise coming from the entryway of the room and it jolts her awake so suddenly that she almost throws the remote across the room.

When she manages to focus, and spots a weary looking Stef hovering a few feet away, she breathes deeply and relaxes. Stef approaches her and takes a seat so close that their arms are touching, it makes her sort of uncomfortable, but she doesn't say anything.

"How long have you been awake?"

Callie simply shrugs and focuses on the faces on the TV. Not one of them are him, and it makes her feel a little better.

"It's a school night, you know." Stef says, and her voice holds no anger or authority, it's just soft and concerned and it's one of those things that makes Callie want to curl up into a ball and cry.

There was a time when Stef probably would have pushed her, but that was then and this is now, and now she knows that the only way to get her daughter to open up is to let her talk when she wants to. So, she sits back and puts her feet up on the table – if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

"what are we watching then?" she asks.

Callie shrugs and flips over the channels a few times until she finds something that she likes. "Friends reruns, I suppose."

"Oh, I love this episode!"

They sit in silence for half of the episode, neither of them paying much attention to the jokes because they both know that, at some point, Callie will have to talk.

"I thought I saw Liam today." She mumbles quietly.

"What do you mean _thought_?"

Callie shifts uncomfortably and takes an uneasy breath. "I saw him, but it wasn't him…it was someone else, my mind was playing tricks on me."

Stef takes her daughters hand and gently rubs the back of it with her thumb. Sometimes, even as a mother, it's hard to think of the right words to say.

When Liam was real, when he was a threat, she could be a cop. She could arrest him for what he did to her daughter, she could stick a pair of cuffs on him and throw him against the hood of the car. She could support the court case and find the right legal aid, and she knew when the right time came to give her daughter supportive hugs or shoulder squeezes, but most of the time Lena did the talking.

"You wanna talk about it?"

Callie sighs and shakes her head. "Not really."

"okay." Stef says. "But you can, you know, if you want to. I'm here."

Callie smiles and leans in close so that her head is on Stef's shoulder. Sometimes it's too exhausting to be reserved and stubborn, sometimes she just has to be a needy daughter. She'd promised herself that she'd try harder a long time ago and she's been working hard to keep that promise. She's more honest now, more open, more emotional, and happier.

"I'm scared that he'll never really go away."

Stef looks down at her daughter and notices a hint of tears in her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Sometimes I see him in dreams and stuff and I've gotten relatively good at dealing with it but other times the thought of him just freaks me out. Today I felt like I couldn't breathe, like something was pressing down on my chest and I-I just…am I always going to be this way?"

Stef wraps her arm around the young girls shoulder and rubs her shoulder gently. "Of course not, love. It's so normal to be scared like that, honey. You'll find a way of dealing with it."

"I hope so. I just hate the control he still has over me. I thought I was over it, you know? But then today…it just freaked me out so much."

"You're a strong girl, love. You know that, right? A lot of girls couldn't deal with even a quarter of the things you've had to deal with in your life. I've watched you grow so much since you moved into this house and I'm so _so _proud of you every day. You're so brave."

Callie smiles and nods her head. "I just want to get rid of all of the stuff from my old life."

Her eyes are drooping now, her mind is like mush. She could sleep for a year, maybe, but she's still a little scared to close her eyes.

"Tired?" Stef asks, yawning.

Callie nods gently. "Yeah, don't wanna sleep." Her voice has lowered to a whisper.

"Don't be scared, hon." Stef says, pulling a blanket over both of them. "I'm right here next to you."

Callie's eyes drift shut as the words leave Stef's mouth. Maybe with Stef's arm around her shoulder she'll be able to block him out of her dreams, maybe with stefs help she'll be able to sleep peacefully.

Maybe she doesn't have to be so afraid anymore.


End file.
